Page:Weird Tales Volume 5 Number 3 (1925-03).djvu/152

Rh He made his way against the gale down Parliament Street toward his hotel, and persuaded the livery man to let him have his fastest horse.

"I can't do it, sir, without a substantial deposit," the man demurred at first. "Horses are my livelihood, you know, and the chances are he'll be killed before you reach the plantation. It's a risky ride, sir, and I'd advise you against it, but if you want to leave forty pounds on deposit, which is what he cost me, I'll let you have him."

It seemed to Olivier an eternity before the cashier at his hotel had cashed his check and he had turned over the notes to the livery man, but at last he was on the horse, clattering down Parliament Street toward the open road.

The wind increased each minute in fury, and his horse staggered and gasped, rearing back against the wall of a building. Olivier dismounted and dragged him up the street until they reached the avenue of royal palms winding along the shore to the Charing plantation. Then he mounted, once more, and flattened himself on the horse as it flew along. The trees bent and creaked in the wind, their long, bladelike leaves writhing in agony. The rain began to pound on the hard road and on the fields of young sugar-cane on either side. But there was another noise, a terrible, deafening clatter, that made itself heard above the roar of the storm. Olivier looked up and traced it to the enormous dry pods on the tall "shaggy-shaggy" trees, as the negroes called them, which kept up a deafening, continuous rattle.

The warning messengers of the hurricane itself had not yet reached the Charing plantation, but the wind had risen, and the negroes were terrified. They streamed out of the sugar mill on the estate and made their way toward the plantation house and the hurricane cellar, where they huddled in fear whenever the hurricane scare, whether false or real, came to the island.

and her uncle were intent over their work in the latter's study. Lord Hubert bent over the microscope, dictating notes to Joan, who stood at his side. The girl seemed to be struggling against something, she knew not what, and she pushed back her hair with the old distracted gesture. Then something seemed suddenly to hold her in its grip, and she shuddered. The fight was hopeless. The wishing machine and Maquarri's power were greater than her own recently awakened instinct to fight, and the zodium waves held her in their grip. Her face became once more a set mask, and her eyes took on their unseeing stare. But it was a shrewd, cunning automaton who worked there with her uncle. Maquarri was forcing all her intelligence to await the exact moment to strike, and once, as she got up and stood over her uncle, fingering the poison zodium ring, she shook her head, for he looked up at the instant, and motioned that she examine the specimen he had under the microscope. The moment was not yet ready, and unknowing, unconscious, she worked in the grip of Maquarri's desires.

But at the moment there was the loud roar of the wind as it shifted and reached the plantation house, and both Joan and her uncle sprang forward to struggle with the heavy hurricane shutters. They tugged and pulled, while the wind flapped the great blinds on their iron hinges, but at last the bolts were shot and the windows secured. At the same instant the wind did its mischief with the electric wires, and the room went suddenly dark. Joan groped her way over to the shelf in the corner, and striking several matches, finally succeeded in lighting the candles which stood always ready for just such an emergency.